Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Rio de Janeiro is enchanting!






If you get a chance.... actually, you MUST take some time out and plan a holiday to Rio de Janeiro (Rive of January - the Portuguese discovered Rio in the month of January and hence the name). Its one of the most enchanting cities in the world. It has every natural feature - ocean, mountains, lagoons, beaches (the best in the world), forests, beautiful people! I was there for 10 days and it was not enough. Please note that getting there is expensive and takes a toll on you (flight from London is 15 hours!!)... but still worth it! Here are some pictures..


Friday, July 27, 2007

Singapore trip






Here are some pics from my Singapore trip.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Singapore and Suchi

It has been a pretty long time! Looks like no one visited the blog. The initial enthusiasm is missing; guess that was to be expected.

Btw, I went to Singapore on an official trip in June. My company took part in CommunicAsia 2007.

I stayed at Suchi's place for a day. It was great catching up with her. She has a very lovely house and a lovelier (if such a word exists) family. Manu and Suchi make a good host. Soha is a darling. But Poor Thing was running fever. Manu and I went to Clark Quay in the evening. We had a bungee ride (not sure if that is the right word). It's reverse bungee, actually. There is this three seater which is, on two ends, attached to a chain. As the machine starts and the seat is thrown up in the sky. In couple of few seconds, you are up some couple of hundred feet. Such an adrenaline rush! The worst is yet to come. As the seater comes down, it drops with you facing the ground. Free fall! Gosh, if my bladder was full, I would have pissed in my pants.

It was such a fun. Hey Suchi, thank Manu for encouraging me to be adventurous.

Then, he showed me Hooter's place. Sexy, but not sexy enough.

Then again on Manu's insistence, I went to Sentosa Island. Good fun.

Suchi thanks for packing stuff for that travel, felt like home.

I AM TOUCHED. You know what I mean? ;)

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Thanks to 20:20 MEDIA!




When I was at 20:20 MEDIA, many of our clients had taken our services primarily for Recruitment and Retention. While for a long time the job was reactive; clients would tell us and we would do it; things changed after Naru opened my mind and eyes to creating opportunities.

It all started with creating a Pyramid of Employee's Needs. It was a model which Naru created; quite similar to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. One of the things that I worked on was putting loads of ideas that clients could do at their own workplace.

The first time I did such presentation was with iSOFT. We did more than four events at iSOFT. These events created opportunity for employees to interact with each other in a lively and non-fussy environment. They were a hit. Amrita worked with me on them. She really managed those events well.

I continued to sell many ideas to different clients; at times, the same set of ideas to many clients. At times it worked and many times it did not. But I had full faith.

When I was still there, I suggested Congruent (where I currently work) to have posters that depict their vision, mission, and values. And I wanted that to be done differently. Usually, companies use Dennis the Menace posters. I wanted Congruent to create a property of their own.

So, Nikhila and I started working on that theme. Nikhila put together a great presentation which outlined the process and framework for creating a mascot and launch it.

Then the presentation went cold. We just could not execute it. Maybe a team has to work on multiple clients or may be Congruent did not have enough resources.

Then I moved to Congruent. First assignment, to implement the internal branding campaign created at 20:20 MEDIA.

The photos you see are of BeeBee, Congruent's mascot. During the recent staff meeting; we introduced BeeBee. BeeBee entertained the crowd and gave away the awards to employees for their performances at work.

I had, parallelly, worked on the posters with BeeBee depicting Congruent's values. The day after the staff meeting when people came in the 'naked walls' invited them with colorful and entertaining posters.

Just before the staff meeting, I ran a two-day teaser campaign. I asked Bala J Raman, President and Co-Founder, to write a mail to employees informing that BeeBee will be joining Congruent as Chief People Officer. Next day I put up posters on entrance with intriguing messages.

It definitely created a buzz!

Well, I am not blowing my own trumpet. I am feeling good that what I learnt and believed at 20:20 MEDIA, I was able to implement them here.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Offsites

One of the reasons why I stayed at 20:20 MEDIA was the offsites that we used to have.

It has been sometime since there had been any. Last one was Chikamagalur. It turned out to be a fulty-full workshop. In hindsight that too was good (my team ended up getting the Best Campaign).

Sunil, I request you to have more offsites at 20:20 MEDIA and one could even be planned for the alumni. Too much to ask for! :)

Can someone post the pics of the Chikamagalur workshop here? For rememberance.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Hi Guys,

Its great to connect with 20:20 again. I really enjoyed reading all the comments posted so far and also saw the pics. Must say 2020ians still look fresh, young and all charged. Congratulations.
As for me, I am Head of Sales with a leading Real Estate Services Management firm in Dubai. Its fun here. Lemme know if any of you are travelling here and it shall be a pleasure to meet.

To all ex and current 2020ians - I am proud that I worked for such a great company and so should you all. Take care and All the Best.

Regards,
Akhilesh

Thursday, April 5, 2007

20:20 alumni going places literally

I was completely bowled over when I started contacting 2020 alumni. Just check out the list of companies where we have ex-2020ians in very prominent positions. At this rate, by the year 2020 we will have 2020ians in all the Fortune 2020 companies …heee heee …sorry about the peeejay……Please do let me know (or update on post) if any of you are in touch with any alumnus who is not mentioned here..or if I have wrongly mentioned someone
o IBM has hijacked 4 of our brightest stars – Vibha Lal, Jasleen Makker, Soumya Ramachandran, Disha Agarwal (Yeh tho 2020 corpcomm team ho gayee)
o Cisco has improved connectivity with Vishak Gopinath and Thomas Cherian
o Patni Computers ne pataya Heena Kanal who is driving strategic communication programs there
o Google - Roli Agarwal is Corporate Communications and Public Affairs Manager, Google………way to go girl
o Ernst and Young – Amar is spreading wisdom through Ernst and Young
o Microsoft – Debjani Mukherjee is based in Hyderabad and doing strategic counseling for Microsoft
o Padmini Singh (ex-Delhi princess aka the Samsung Superstar) is working for IMG, USA
o Acer – Dinesh Nair - Manager Retail APAC
o FORD – Nidhi Madan
o BEA – Maya Culas (Mrs. Viju George)
o Congruent Solutions – R Sriganesh
o Hewlett Packard – Kakuni Mahto
o NIKE – Monica Mascarenhas
o Symantec – Poornima
o Intel - Neena Raina
o Text 100,London – Sukul Bagai
o Edelman, Singapore – Suchitra Viswanathan
o PWC – Jasmine Lakdawala
o Text 100 – Priyanka Gupta, Alka Sharma, Shweta Nanda, Debjani Gupta
o Running their own companies –
§ all of them run their own PR agencies
· Werner Fernandes,
· Mira Lal,
· Durjay Puri
§ Imran runs his own company(event management)